Sara Takanashi in action during the first round of the Ski Jumping World Cup in Hinzenbach, Austria.

Among the hundred-strong contingent that Japan is sending to Sochi are two ski jumpers with two very different tales.

One is a teen sensation going into her first Winter Games as the favorite to become the first-ever Olympic champion in women’s ski jumping. The event will be making its debut as an official competition in Sochi.

The other is a six-time Olympian, already considered a “legend” by fellow jumpers, who has been in the sport for more than three decades but has yet to capture Olympic gold.

Sharing the spotlight are the 17-year-old Sara Takanashi and 41-year-old Noriaki Kasai.

Japanese media have dubbed the 152-cm-tall Takanashi the “small big jumper,” carrying the nation’s hopes for an Olympic gold medal after its athletes failed to bring one home from the 2010 Vancouver Games. As Sochi draws close, not a day has gone by without the face of the high school student from the northern island of Hokkaido showing up on Japanese TV.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Sara Takanashi poses at the end of the Ladies FIS Ski Jumping World Cup in Planica, Slovenia, on Jan. 25.

“If I win the gold, it would not be just for me, but for the fans and everyone who’s supported me,” she said during a program on public broadcaster NHK last week. “So I want to fly high in Sochi.”

Takanashi was last season’s World Cup champion and she’s dominated the competition this season again, winning 10 out of 13 events so far, setting a record for the most victories in a season. That brings her total wins to 19, tying the record for the most World Cup wins in Nordic skiing by a Japanese athlete.

Her closest rival will be Sara Hendrickson of the U.S., who was the 2011/12 season champion but missed the start of this season due to an injury.

Experts say that Takanashi’s ability to move quickly into the best position in the air to increase her jumping distance is unrivaled. She has in the past had trouble with the more gradual jump slope that is used on the Sochi hill, but has won events on the same type of slopes this season.

While Takanashi may just be starting off on setting records, Kasai already has many under his belt. He has appeared in more World Cup events and Olympic Games than any other jumper in history. In January, he became the oldest jumper to win a World Cup.

Competing in the World Cup since 1989, Kasai is well-known–as “Kamikaze Kasai”– among fans in Europe where the sport is popular. After his victory in Austria last month–his first in 10 years–rival jumpers gathered around him, bowing and embracing him to pay their respects. Some of the coaches of the other teams–who had competed against Kasai in their youth–also celebrated from the coaches stand.

European Pressphoto Agency

Noriaki Kasai after his second round jump at the Ski Jumping World Cup at the Muehlenkopf ski jump in Willingen, Germany.

Currently third in this season’s overall World Cup rankings, Kasai says he is aiming for the gold at Sochi. The flyer has a silver medal from the 1994 Lillehammer Games as a member of the team event. But when the team won a dramatic gold in Nagano four years later, coming from behind as the snow fell on the hill, and sending all of Japan in an ecstatic frenzy, Kasai wasn’t on the squad due to an injury.

Missing out on that moment has driven him to compete. “I haven’t been able to show you a medal,” Kasai told his colleagues at the company that he has worked for since 2001 as he set off for Sochi last month. “So I’d like to bring back a gold medal.”

The 23-year-old has said this season will be her last, and hopes to capture gold at Sochi with her trademark triple axel jump. She is the only female skater to have completed three triple axels in a single event, at the Vancouver Games. While she has struggled to perfect the jump this season, she has won both of the Grand Prix events she’s taken part in this season.

Standing between her and the gold medal once again will likely be Kim, who has returned from a two-season break and is aiming to win back-to-back Olympic gold, a feat only accomplished by Katarina Witt in 1984 and 1988.

Other Japanese figure skaters are also strong medal contenders at Sochi. Among the men is Yuzuru Hanyu, 19, who seeks to repeat his December performance at the Grand Prix finals, where he beat three-time world champion Patrick Chan of Canada. Vancouver bronze medalist Daisuke Takahashi is also on the men’s squad.

Two Vancouver medalists are also aiming for the top of the podium in the men’s 500 meter speed skating race. Keiichiro Nagashima and Joji Kato finished second and third respectively four years ago.

And on the ski slopes will be Aiko Uemura, making her fifth appearance at the Winter Games in the women’s moguls. The 34-year-old made her Olympic debut at the 1998 games held in her hometown of Nagano, where she finished seventh. She became the World Cup champion in the 2007/2008 season, but has yet to win an Olympic medal, finishing fourth in Vancouver.

About Japan Real Time

Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com